Electrolysis is the project name for Mozilla’s efforts to split Firefox into multiple processes to improve responsiveness, stability, and security. The first phase of this work was to split Firefox into a UI process and a content process.

This first phase of enabling our multi-process architecture is making its way to some of our Firefox 48 users starting this week. This is the biggest change we’ve ever made to Firefox, so we’re rolling it out slowly. For Firefox 48, we’re only enabling it for classes of users that our testing shows it works well for and to begin with, we’ll only enable it for 1% of those users so we can check on the stability and engagement data and make sure nothing new and bad is showing up. After that initial period, if all looks well, we’ll ramp up to 100% of those users, which will be about half of all Firefox 48 users.

Add-ons

If our Beta testing goes well, in Firefox 49 we will enable the multi-process architecture for users with a small set of add-ons that are known to work well with the multi-process architecture. In Firefox 50, again provided beta testing goes well, we plan to enable the multi-process architecture for users with add-ons that have either set a flag to say they are compatible or that were built with our new WebExtensions add-on API which is compatible by design. Eventually we will enable the multi-process architecture for all users and add-ons that are incompatible may no longer work. For this reason it is imperative that add-on authors update their add-ons to be compatible with the multi-process architecture.

Accessibility and touch screens

The next major multi-process update is scheduled for Firefox 51 when we’ll ship it to users with touchscreens, accessibility, and right to left browsers. That will conclude the first phase of our roll-out of the basic process separation that brings responsiveness to the Firefox UI, even when heavy pages are loading.

That’s not the end of our multi-process work. Not even close.

Multiple content processes

The second phase of this effort is to support multiple content processes. Where before we split content from UI so that pages loading wouldn’t slow down the UI, next up we’re splitting up the content processes so that one heavy page loading cannot slow down or hang pages loading in other tabs. This work is underway and should be available in the first half of 2017.

In parallel to work on multiple content processes, we’re also working on building a hardened sandbox for content processes. The goal for sandboxing is to restrict what access processes that host web content have to the browser and to the operating system. This will help secure Firefox against a range of potential exploits. If all goes well in testing, this work could see release this year.

Out of process add-ons

The final piece of this multi-process work will be to isolate extensions into their own sandboxed processes. Similar to how isolating and sandboxing web pages can help improve performance and prevent security exploits, putting extensions into their own process will make sure that an extension doesn’t slow down the browser or web pages and will help to prevent some classes of attacks on Firefox that could happen through extensions. We’re still in the preliminary phase of this work.

This is a huge project that will take several more releases to complete but we’ve got a great foundation in place with the first phase shipping to end users now. We’ll build on that foundation to bring even more responsiveness and security to Firefox over the coming months without sacrificing the memory usage advantage we have over our competitors. Stay tuned to this and other Mozilla blogs for updates as the biggest architectural change in Firefox’s history rides the trains to release.

]]>Reducing Adobe Flash Usage in Firefoxhttps://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/07/20/reducing-adobe-flash-usage-in-firefox/
Wed, 20 Jul 2016 07:00:30 +0000https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/?p=2407Continue reading]]>Browser plugins, especially Flash, have enabled some of our favorite experiences on the Web, including videos and interactive content. But plugins often introduce stability, performance, and security issues for browsers. This is not a trade-off users should have to accept.

Mozilla and the Web as a whole have been taking steps to reduce the need for Flash content in everyday browsing. Starting in August, Firefox will block certain Flash content that is not essential to the user experience, while continuing to support legacy Flash content. These and future changes will bring Firefox users enhanced security, improved battery life, faster page load, and better browser responsiveness.

Over the past few years, Firefox has implemented Web APIs to replace functionality that was formerly provided only by plugins. This includes audio/video playback and streaming capabilities, clipboard integration, fast 2D and 3D graphics, WebSocket networking, and microphone/camera access. As websites have switched from Flash to other web technologies, the plugin crash rate in Firefox has dropped significantly:

Firefox will continue this trend by blocking specific Flash content invisible to users. This is expected to reduce Flash crashes and hangs by up to 10%. To minimize website compatibility problems, the changes are initially limited to a short, curated list of Flash content that can be replaced with HTML. We intend to add to this list over time.

Later this year, we plan to expand this list to include the use of Flash to check content viewability, a common practice to measure advertising. This will improve Firefox performance and device battery life. We will make this change at the same time Firefox implements the equivalent HTML Intersection Observer API (Firefox bug 1243846) and recommend that content producers currently using Flash to measure viewability adopt this new API as soon as it is available.

In 2017, Firefox will require click-to-activate approval from users before a website activates the Flash plugin for any content. Websites that currently use Flash or Silverlight for video or games should plan on adopting HTML technologies as soon as possible. Firefox currently supports encrypted video playback using Adobe Primetime and Google Widevine as alternatives to plugin video.

We continue to work closely with Adobe to deliver the best possible Flash experience for our users. Our engineering partnership has led to improvements in high-DPI support on Windows, enhanced sandboxing, and an accelerated Flash rendering pipeline that improves performance and stability.

These changes are part of our ongoing efforts to make browsing safer and faster without sacrificing the Web experiences our users love. As we announced last year, Firefox plans to drop support for all NPAPI plugins, except Flash, in March 2017. The next major Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) release, also scheduled for March, will continue to support plugins such as Silverlight and Java until early 2018, for those users who need more time for their transition.

We are experimenting with many other features and improvements that will make Firefox an even more awesome platform for discovery and collaboration. We welcome your feedback and feature requests.

]]>Update on Firefox support for OS Xhttps://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/04/29/update-on-firefox-support-for-os-x/
Fri, 29 Apr 2016 21:11:14 +0000https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/?p=2394Continue reading]]>Mozilla will end support for Firefox on OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8 in August, 2016. At that time, Firefox will continue to function on these platforms but will no longer receive new feature or security updates.

Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) 45 will continue to support OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8 until mid-2017, but this ESR release will be the last that supports them.

All three of these versions are no longer supported by Apple. Mozilla strongly encourages our users to upgrade to a version of OS X currently supported by Apple. Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates, have known exploits, and are dangerous for you to use.

]]>What’s New in Firefox Betahttps://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/04/27/whats-new-in-firefox-beta/
Wed, 27 Apr 2016 20:55:14 +0000https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/?p=2390Continue reading]]>Today’s beta release of Firefox features a tool to view the open tabs that are synced across your desktop and mobile instances of Firefox.

Updates to Firefox for Android focus on a set of design changes that will make browsing safer and simpler for our users.

]]>Firefox is the default browser for Linux users on Ubuntu, new snap format coming soonhttps://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/04/21/firefox-default-browser-for-linux-users-ubuntu-new-snap-format-coming-soon/
Thu, 21 Apr 2016 12:00:22 +0000https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/?p=2388Continue reading]]>At Mozilla, we strive to offer users a great experience based on transparency, choice and trust, and to make Firefox available across many platforms, devices and operating systems. Today, Mozilla and Canonical are renewing their partnership to make Firefox the default browser for Ubuntu users. We are proud to have been a partner of choice for Ubuntu for over a decade. Canonical and Mozilla share a similar heritage as open-source and community-supported organizations.

Ubuntu version 16.04 will include the introduction of the snap infrastructure. With the snap format, we will be able to continually optimize Firefox on Ubuntu. Like our rapid engineering release cycle, snap format will allow us to provide Linux users the most up-to-date features, in particular security patches, even after major Operating System ship dates.

Previously, a static version of Firefox would ship with each new Operating System version for the lifecycle of that OS. With the snap format, new features can be released to users of older OS versions too. Later this year, we will offer Firefox in snap format making it easier to push the browser directly to users rather than relying on an intermediary to accept updates before they reach users.

]]>Mozilla To Test Widevine CDM in Firefox Nightlyhttps://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/04/08/mozilla-to-test-widevine-cdm-in-firefox-nightly/
Fri, 08 Apr 2016 21:23:25 +0000https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/?p=2384Continue reading]]>Update, June 7, 2016:Support for Widevine is now available in the general Firefox release.

Update, April 27, 2016: Today, we will expand support of Widevine to our general release channel beginning in Firefox 47.

As we previously announced, Mozilla has been working to enable playback of HTML5 video content that requires DRM. Last year, we launched with Adobe’s Primetime CDM and now we will soon be testing Firefox support for Google’s Widevine CDM on Windows and Mac OS X. Firefox will download the CDM shortly after users first run Firefox after installing or upgrading. The CDM will be activated when users first interact with a site that uses Widevine.

Widevine support is an alternative solution for streaming services that currently rely on Silverlight for playback of DRM-protected video content. It will allow websites to show DRM-protected video content in Firefox without the use of NPAPI plugins. This is an important step on Mozilla’s roadmap to remove NPAPI plugin support.

Click here to install a DRM-free version of Firefox 45 in your locale.

]]>Shipping Some Firefox Features Outside of the Release Cyclehttps://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/03/25/shipping-some-firefox-features-outside-of-the-release-cycle/
Fri, 25 Mar 2016 21:02:58 +0000https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/?p=2380Continue reading]]>Four years ago, we updated the Firefox release process to the Train Model to move at the speed of the Web. More recently we improved the process further. We are now adding a mechanism to ship some features in Firefox even faster. This means it will take even less time for Firefox innovation and improvements to reach users.

Some features will now be shipped between release cycles, starting with Firefox Hello Beta. These modules are built into Firefox and delivered similarly to add-ons. This allows them to be updated more-frequently than the standard Firefox Rapid Release cycle.

This won’t interfere with our release cycle, which will still be used for most significant updates and users will only notice that some features, like Hello, are updated more frequently.

This is part of our ongoing commitment to continue delivering uncompromised quality in Firefox.

]]>Viewing Cached Tabs Offline Ready for Testing in Firefox for Android Betahttps://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/03/09/viewing-cached-tabs-offline-ready-for-testing-in-firefox-for-android-beta/
Wed, 09 Mar 2016 23:09:24 +0000https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/?p=2375Continue reading]]>We are testing a feature in Firefox for Android Beta that will display some Web pages even when you’re offline.

If you’ve recently visited a site and it is still cached in the offline storage on your device, Firefox for Android Beta will display the stored offline version of the page instead of showing you an error. There’s no need to do anything to try this feature. You’ll notice that some pages you visit when you’re offline will still be displayed in Firefox for Android Beta, even when you aren’t connected to the Internet.

]]>Discontinuing Rarely Used Firefox Featureshttps://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/03/08/discontinuing-rarely-used-firefox-features/
Tue, 08 Mar 2016 15:58:27 +0000https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/?p=2373Continue reading]]>We’re always looking for new ways to improve Firefox. Part of that process sometimes means that we need to remove features that aren’t used very much or support for platforms that are going away. This lets us concentrate our resources on finding new ways to delight Firefox users.

As part of this ongoing process, we are now removing Tab Groups from Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux. Users who want to keep this functionality can do so through add-ons that offer an identical functionality, explained here.

In Firefox for Android we are ending support for rarely used versions of the Android operating system. We have stopped support for Android OS version 3.0 through 3.2.6 (Honeycomb) and will soon end support for 2.3–2.3.7 (Gingerbread). Users can learn about versions of Android Firefox supports here.

We’ve tried to minimize any inconvenience for the few users affected by these changes. As always, please visit our Feedback Page to share your thoughts.

]]>Update on Connected Devices Innovation Process: Four Projects Move Forwardhttps://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/03/01/update-on-connected-devices/
Tue, 01 Mar 2016 16:17:46 +0000https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/?p=2368Continue reading]]>The Internet of Things is changing the world around us, with new use cases, experiences and technologies emerging every day. As we continue to experiment in this space, we wanted to take a moment to share more details around our approach, process and current projects we’re testing.

We are focused on a gated innovation process that includes time to brainstorm solutions to real life problems and evaluate the market opportunity for these ideas. Additionally, we are aligning ourselves with users when it comes to simplicity, ease-of-use and engaging experiences, while ensuring everything is built with the Mozilla values of openness, transparency, privacy and user control at the core.

We have identified a shortlist of experiments as our first group of projects in need of community participation to help us develop, test and evaluate. We’re excited to say that our first round of projects cover a wide range of potential solutions, as you can see below:

Project Link: Your personal user agent that understands your preferences for how you want to interact with the world of devices in your home, and automate your connected world for you. All of this still done conveniently and securely, but completely under your control.

Project Sensor Web: The easiest path from sensors to open data for contributors to collaboratively build a detailed understanding of their living environments. We are launching a pilot project to build a crowdsourced pm2.5 sensor network.

Project Smart Home: A middle ground between “in a box” solutions like Apple Homekit and DIY solutions like Raspberry Pi. Combining modular, affordable hardware with easy-to-use rules, Smart Home empowers people to solve unique everyday problems in new and creative ways.

Project Vaani: An IoT enabler package to developers, device makers and users who want to add a voice interface to their devices in a flexible and customizable way. We will prototype interactions at home in near term, and in future, showcase the ability to access services from the open Web.

We cannot do this without our dedicated and passionate community of developers and volunteers serving in an array of roles, as they are critical at ensuring each project has the best opportunity at making an impact. If you are interested in participating as a developer or tester, please click here to get involved.

We look forward to giving you updates on these projects as we continue to innovate with you all, out in the open.